


pink and blue

by yennefers



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Cats, M/M, jack bauer come home 2018, lowkey pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-04 22:04:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15850287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yennefers/pseuds/yennefers
Summary: “It was by the dumpster,” Mac says. He sounds scandalised. “It’s been shitting it down with rain all day, bro. C’mon. I’ll take it back tomorrow.”The cat stares at Dennis, wrapped up tight in the duster. It blinks at him, looking thoroughly unimpressed, and then it sneezes. It’s the tiniest, most pathetic hiss of a sound he’s ever heard.“Jesus Christ,” Dennis mutters. He moves out of the way, letting Mac step inside, and then he slams the front door with significantly more force than necessary.





	pink and blue

_February 14th, 2015_

_6:05PM_

_Philadelphia, PA_

  
“Where did you find that,” Dennis says, slowly. “Where did you find that, and why do you still have it?”  
  
Mac shrugs. He readjusts the bundle in his arms.  
  
“In the alley.”  
  
“In the - it probably has a mother! Don’t these things have mothers?”  
  
“It was by the dumpster,” Mac says. He sounds scandalised. “It’s been shitting it down with rain all day, bro. C’mon. I’ll take it back tomorrow.”  
  
The cat stares at Dennis, wrapped up tight in the duster. It blinks at him, looking thoroughly unimpressed, and then it sneezes. It’s the tiniest, most pathetic hiss of a sound he’s ever heard.  
  
“Jesus Christ,” Dennis mutters. He moves out of the way, letting Mac step inside, and then he slams the front door with significantly more force than necessary.

The problem with Mac, in Dennis’ opinion, is impulse control. He has whole paragraphs in Mac’s file on this. Mac’s emotions never stop. He has a feeling and acts on it immediately, the mental equivalent of crossing the road without looking when there’s an 18-wheeler heading your way, and this has led to a number of strange things ending up in the apartment. Some of them have proved to be worth keeping - the duster, for example, is a possession they both treasure - but the karaoke machine Mac lost a bidding war for on ebay? That was a classic instance of Mac’s impulsivity leading him astray.

This cat is another.

“I nearly hit him with the back door, dude,” Mac insists. “He was trying to come inside the bar, that must mean he likes us.”

The cat is staring at Dennis. Directly at Dennis. It’s growling, and its flattened back ears are saying,  _‘touch me and die’._

“He’s been purring ever since I picked him up,” Mac says, proudly.

There’s no way in hell Dennis will be able to talk him into putting it back tonight. Mac’s weird homebody instincts have already kicked in; the window for persuasion probably closed about ten seconds after he found the fucking thing. No, it’s gonna have to be tomorrow - he’ll tell Mac to bring it down to the bar, and then he’ll take it into the alley when he’s not looking. Not an ideal solution, admittedly, but better than the alternative.

“One night,” he says, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “ _One night_ , Mac. Then it’s gone.”

“One night,” Mac promises. “I swear.”

His grin is giddy and wide, and it’s a very dangerous thing for two reasons. Firstly, it means he’s already planning to get around the ultimatum - and second, it makes Dennis’ heartbeat jump in a way he doesn’t appreciate or have time for.

“Hey, bro, can you hold him while I shower? I got soaked out there.”

“It has legs,” Dennis says, slowly. “I’m assuming. It has legs it can use.”

“Oh, he does,” says Mac, “yeah, I saw them, but I googled it and it says you should get them used to people by, like. Wrapping them up and holding them a lot. So.”

Even as he says this, he’s already walking over and dumping the whole cat-duster-arrangement onto Dennis’ lap - and Dennis splutters, and scowls, and he snaps, “hey -  _no_ -“, but Mac’s already halfway to the bathroom.

“Thanks!” he calls out over his shoulder, and then he’s gone, the door slamming shut behind him.

The bundle on his lap smells distinctly of soggy leather and wet fur. It wriggles - and the worst part is he can’t even put it down, because the only thing more annoying than holding a feral cat in your apartment, in Dennis’ opinion, is a feral cat running loose in your apartment. There are probably still a couple living in Dee’s walls.

The duster bundle wriggles again, growling, and he tightens his grip.

“Listen to me,” Dennis says, in a furious whisper. “ _Listen to me._  This is not a permanent arrangement.”

The cat‘s slitted eyes glare up at him. It doesn’t move.

*

It isn’t that he doesn’t like cats. That’s not the problem here. Special Agent Jack Bauer, for example, was a premium feline - smart, ruggedly handsome, mysterious. His and Dee’s childhood tabby (Miss Fee, who was as short-tempered as she was rotund) used to sleep at the foot of his bed and no-one else’s. The issue is that Mac apparently has no eye when it comes to selecting acceptable cats.

It’s difficult to tell, since so much is covered up under the duster, but what he can see isn’t particularly promising. There’s a pink nose with an angry scar running across it, muddy fur, bent whiskers, and a pair of beady yellow eyes that glare at him furiously from the minute Mac leaves right up until the second the bathroom door opens again.

“Hey, buddy,” Mac says, walking over. His voice is unnaturally soft, so much so that Dennis’ breath catches in his throat, because Mac never speaks to him like this -

Mac, ignoring Dennis altogether, bends down and scoops the cat up in his arms.

“Were you good?” he asks, tapping it on the nose. “‘Course you were. Best cat in town, huh?”

“It hissed at me,” Dennis says stiffly.

“Well, you have been kind of rude to him, dude.”

Dennis bristles.

“That’s not -” he snaps, but Mac cuts him off.

“He can probably sense this stuff! Poppins always knew when my dad was pissed at him, he’d go hide out back behind the trash.”

“Poppins was always out back behind the trash,” Dennis says. “Mac, I cannot think of a single encounter I had with that dog that didn’t involve - okay, look, doesn’t matter, what I’m trying to -”

“He can tell you don’t like him,” Mac points out, “is all I’m saying.”

“Well, he’s right,” Dennis mutters.

He risks glancing up and immediately regrets it, because Mac is giving him that look. Disappointed, slightly pissed, a little lonely - the one that says he knew Dennis wasn’t going to play along with whatever this is but he’s annoyed about it anyway.

“I’m going to bed,” Dennis announces, ignoring Mac’s face and the fact that the sun hasn’t even set as he walks over to his bedroom door. “Keep that thing in your room overnight. I don’t want it touching my shit.”

*

If cities can hold grudges against their occupants, Philadelphia is currently doing that, and it’s doing it with alarming enthusiasm.

It rains all night. It rains all day. It rains, in fact, pretty much solidly, and Dennis’ suggestion that it was time to return the cat to its ancestral home was met with an affronted, “dude, he’ll drown” - consequently, to Mac’s delight and Dennis’ churlish reluctance, it’s still there the next evening. Mac decided to release it from the duster at some point, and the fucker has settled (deliberately, without a doubt) on a pile of clean clothes he just got out the dryer.

“Get off,” Dennis snaps, prodding it with one bare foot.

The cat yawns lazily, baring a mouth of very sharp, needle-like teeth. Dennis pokes at it again - and this time, quick as a thrown dart, it slaps his toes with one paw and hisses at him.

“Dennis,” Mac says, exasperatedly. “We’re trying acclimatise him, not piss him off, come on -”

“Are you seeing this?” Dennis says, brandishing his scratched foot at Mac - who doesn’t even bother to get off the couch to look, uncaring asshole that he is. “Are you seeing what this feral animal has done to me in my own home?”

Mac rolls his eyes.

“You provoked him. He was doing fine.”

There is a brief, strained pause.

“Are you seriously,” Dennis says, slowly, “honest to god, taking the side of a cat over your own roommate, Jesus Christ -”

“He knows you don’t like him!” Mac insists. “Bro, you brought this on yourself, acting like an ass is gonna make you a target -”

“I’m the one acting like an ass? Really?”

“You’re a grown man with a grudge against a kitten,” Mac says. “So, yeah. You’re absolutely the asshole in this situation.”

Dennis raises his eyebrows.

“A kitten?”

“You heard me,” Mac tells him, stubbornly. “You’re yelling at a baby, Dennis, how does that make you feel?”

“First of all,” Dennis says, “I don’t have any feelings about that, thank you for asking. Second, and more importantly, that is not a kitten. That’s a fully grown beast of an animal waiting for a chance to pounce.”

Mac scowls at him.

“No, it isn’t,” he says.

Dennis frowns.

“Yes, it is,” he says.

Mac sighs. He digs his phone out his pocket.

“Fine,” he mutters. “Whatever. Let’s settle this.”

*

“So,” Mac says, clapping his hands together as he opens the door. “Bro, listen, there’s been a bit of a - we do have a cat for you, I swear, but Dennis kept poking at it and then it ran off -”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Charlie tells him, peering eagerly over Mac’s shoulder. “Don’t even - just show me what we’ve got to work with, lemme take a look.”

He pushes past Mac and walks into the living room, where the duster has been spread out carefully over the floor - at Mac’s insistence, something about comfort and familiar scents - and then he bends down over it, picking a long, thin strand of cat hair off the collar.

“Ginger tabby,” he says, after a few seconds. “That means it’s a probably a boy. Still kinda kitten-sized, but like… teenage kitten, not baby kitten. Bony. Pretty matted up.”

“Holy shit, dude,” says Mac, wide eyed. “You can tell all that from a hair?”   
  
“Yeah, no,” Charlie says. “The cat’s on the counter.”

Dennis looks up just in time to see a paw slap into a mug, and a mug crash down onto the kitchen tiles.

*

They split a mildly inadvisable number of six packs between them once the cat’s been caught and safely relegated to Mac’s room: Mac claims to need a pick-me-up after the stress of the past half hour, Charlie is drinking because free booze has been placed in front of him, and Dennis is drinking because a rude, claw brandishing bitch decided to get fur on his shirts, attack his feet, and make a mess all over the kitchen.

“We agreed that he’d put it back. An’ he didn’t. And now it’s still here,” he informs Charlie, morose and a little slurred. Charlie takes a final swig of his beer before chucking the empty can onto the small pile growing in front of them. He leans against Dennis’ side - a warm, comforting weight that makes Dennis feel kind of sleepy.

“That,” Charlie says, succinctly. “Is a bummer.”

Mac, thank god, is already dozing on the floor between them; otherwise Dennis has no doubt he’d be leaping to the cat’s defence. As it is Dennis sighs, world-weary, and takes another sip.

“It’s just,” he mutters. “Y’know. It likes him way more than me, dude.”

“Cats are like that, though,” Charlie points out. “They’re picky. It’s why they’re better than dogs, ‘cause you can bribe a dog into liking you. You gotta earn it with cats.”

“I don’t want to earn anything,” Dennis says. “I just want it to go away.”

“‘S’all gonna work out,” Charlie tells him, seriously - he hiccups, presses a sticky, well intentioned kiss to Dennis’ cheek, and then he slips down to lie on the floor next to Mac, eyes closed, and starts to snore.

*

On the third day after the cat’s arrival, while they’re watching it stalk a stray piece of string across the grubby living room carpet, Mac says, “what name d’you think we should go with?”  
  
“We are not naming it anything,” Dennis says, stiffly. “Because we agreed that we’re putting it back.”

Mac, as expected, ignores him entirely.  
  
“Dennis Junior?”

Dennis scowls.  
  
“Mac, that is exactly what you named the goddamn dog and look how that ended -”  
  
“All right,” Mac says, fidgeting uncomfortably, his cheeks reddening, “whatever, Brian Junior, then. After that guy whose identity you stole. That’s kind of the same thing.”  
  
“I did not steal his identity,” Dennis insists. “Dead people don’t need identities. I adopted it. There’s - it was a very nuanced situation, Mac, I wouldn’t expect you to understand -”  
  
“So you agree,” says Mac, eyebrows raised. “Brian Junior.”  
  
“No,” Dennis says, flatly.

Mac sighs. He taps his fingers impatiently on the couch arm.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because we are not keeping the cat! And even if we were, Brian is a terrible name for anything. It’s what you call a twice-divorced accountant with a bald patch and coke problem and three kids who all hate him, we’re not naming it Brian.”  
  
*  
  
They name it Brian.  
  
Dennis, at least, manages to fight for the right to a middle name - and so the cat becomes Brian ‘Bourne’ Junior, in honour of one of the best movie franchises ever to be created in the early 2000s. Mac starts calling it BB for short, which Dennis vehemently objects to, but since the only other abbreviation available is BJ, he finds himself fighting a losing battle.   
  
“He can be a mouser for Paddy’s!” Mac says one morning, beaming with enthusiasm. Dennis looks up from his coffee.

“You mean you want to keep it at the bar?” he says, hopefully.

“Well,” Mac amends. “No, I meant he could come to the bar with us in the day and then come back here again at night. We can’t keep him there full-time, Dennis, that’s not ethical labour.”

Dennis rubs a hand over his eyes and opens his mouth, ready to disagree with this statement on several fronts, but before he can the relative quiet of the morning is broken by a loud, hacking cough, and it doesn’t come from either of them.

“You okay, buddy?” Mac says - the legs of his chair screech a little as he stumbles from the kitchen table, picking the cat up off the floor and holding him so they’re face to face, like that’s going to tell him anything at all. Dennis waves a dismissive hand.

“He’s fine.”

“What if he’s sick?” Mac says, worriedly. Dennis rolls his eyes.

“He’s fine,” he repeats. “He’s - y’know, he’s a street cat, he’s probably like Poppins. He can handle anything.”

Mac doesn’t reply. He just keeps looking at the damn cat, chewing on his bottom lip, his brow furrowed. Dennis’ heart does that thing again, clawing insistently at his chest like it’s got a point to prove.

*

“What do you want?” Dee says, cautiously. It’s kind of difficult to hear her, since she’s only opened the door to her apartment by about an inch.

“Frank’s credit card.”

“Not sure if you’ve noticed, moron,” Dee points out, starting to push the door shut, “but I’m not Frank. Go away.”

“That you’re not,” Dennis says, mildly. “But you do have his credit card.”

The door stops closing.

“How do you -”

Dennis sighs, impatiently.

“I just checked his wallet at the bar,” he explains. “The only person with the skills to pickpocket something like that other than me is you. So. I want to borrow it.”

There’s a brief pause. Dee opens the door carefully, letting him inside, arms folded and her eyes narrowed.

“What’s in it for me?”

“My silence,” Dennis says. “And you can have the range rover for a day.”

“Five days.”

“Two.”

Dee raises her eyebrows, disbelieving.

“You’re that desperate, huh?” she says. “You’ll give me your car for two full days, just like that?”

Dennis grits his teeth.

“Do we have a deal or not?”

“Relax, dickbag, you can take it. Just tell me why you -”

Dee’s expression changes - caution giving way to something darkly amused and deeply self-satisfied as she stops midway through opening her wallet.

“Oh,” she says, slowly. “Oh, wow. This is about the cat, isn’t it?”

Dennis stiffens. Dee’ eyebrows rise right up to her hairline.

“Jesus  _Christ_ , Dennis, you get more obvious by the day -“

“Just give me the goddamn card,” Dennis hisses. Dee’s cackling laughter follows him all the way back down the hallway.

*

It’s surprisingly difficult to coax Mac out of the apartment. It is, however, incredibly easy to get him to start ticking things off the supply list he looks up on his phone once they arrive at the pet care aisle of the nearest Walmart.

Maybe too easy.

“Does a cat need this much food?” Dennis says, eyeing their shopping cart with skepticism. “Has any cat, ever, needed this much food?”

“He’s a kitten,” Mac insists, dropping another case in. “Apparently he should be eating a shitton.”

Other so-called essentials Mac insists upon include litter, a litter box, gimmicky looking cat treats, a spray that promises to prevent ticks, and a blanket that’s ridiculously, absurdly soft, considering its primary user is going to be a creature that once lived in an alleyway. He also drops in a handful of little toy mice from the checkout clearance rack when he thinks Dennis isn’t looking, apparently forgetting the fact that they’re paying together.

“Oh, I love these,” the cashier says, ringing up the blanket. “They’re so cute, aren’t they?”

“Thanks!” Mac says, brightly. “It’s for our son.”  
  
Dennis chokes on his own spit.

The rest of the check-out passes with all the pleasantness of mild sleep paralysis. Dennis just stands there, frozen still, while Mac packs the bags and hands over the credit card, feeling like a record that got stuck mid-song.

“What the hell was that?” he hisses eventually, finding his voice as they walk back to the car. Mac frowns at him.

“What?”

“Why did you - you know. To the cashier.”

“Oh!” Mac says, his expression clearing. “I did it for the coupon deals. Chicks love gay dads.”

“We didn’t get any coupons, Mac,” Dennis points out. “We got our receipt - which is extortionate, by the way - and we got ‘have a nice day’, same as everyone else, that’s hardly -“

“And next time we’ll get coupons,” Mac insists. “‘Cause she’ll remember us as the gay dads.”

He’s looking at Dennis so earnestly, like he really, genuinely believes the grade-a bullshit coming out of his mouth - and it’s terrible, in all honesty, how much Dennis wants to touch him. It’s horrendous.

“Whatever,” he mutters, slipping into the driver’s seat.

*

The cat has the audacity to take one look at the blanket Mac spreads out on a designated corner of the floor before picking it up and dragging it stubbornly, determinedly, towards Dennis’ laundry basket.

“No,” Dennis says.

“I don’t think you get a choice in this,” says Mac. He’s trying to play it straight - or rather, he tries to play it straight for two seconds before he gives in, snorting out a laugh.

 _Bitch_ , Dennis thinks, glaring at the cat. The cat just stares right back, cold-eyed, kneading the sleeve of one of his shirts and digging its claws in.

*

By the end of week two, Mac’s started taking the cat to the bar with them every morning - supposedly so it can get a “lay of the land” in preparation for mousing work - but all it really does is sleep on various surfaces, scratch up beer mats, follow Charlie around, and generally make a nuisance of itself in a thousand small and irritating ways. Introducing it to the rest of the gang was a mistake: they swarm all over the damn thing like locusts, and the cat, of course, lures them in, acting like an innocent, ugly angel.

Dennis feels obligated to give credit where credit is due. From one talented manipulator to another, he has to respect the operation this cat is pulling, here. That doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“Does nobody else see how ridiculous this is?”

“How ridiculous what is, exactly?” Dee says, holding the cat on her lap while she scrolls absently through her phone. The fucker is purring happily - or it was, until it spots Dennis, at which point its tail starts to flick and its ears flatten back.

“This!” Dennis snaps, pointing at the cat. The tail flicking grows stronger. “We can’t have a cat in the bar. We don’t have the time or space for a long-term cat in the bar, this whole thing is absurd.”

“You wanted to keep that junkyard cat in here,” Charlie points out, leaning back on his barstool to settle his arms on the counter behind him.

“Completely different,” Dennis says, dismissively. “That was - Jack Bauer had gravitas, he was well worth keeping around -“

“Sweet Bee has gravitas,” Charlie insists, and Dennis’ brain slides to a halt.

“I’m sorry?”

“Sweet Bee totally has an aura to him, dude. That’s all I’m saying.”

“ _Sweet Bee?_ ”

“Well, yeah,” Charlie says, slowly. “It’s - y’know, it’s a pun, Sweet Bee, Sweet Dee -“

“I know it’s a pun,” Dennis hisses. “Why the hell are you giving it nicknames?”

Charlie squints at him.

“Why  _wouldn’t_ we give it nicknames?” he says, staring at Dennis with his brow furrowed, like the whole conversation has crossed into territory too unfamiliar for him to parse.

Dennis makes a low, strangled growl in the bottom of his throat, and storms out the back door.

*

There’s only person whose feelings on this situation are even vaguely as intense as his, and that person is Mac. The problem, of course, is that Mac’s emotions are intense in the exact opposite direction.

“He’s still not eating,” Mac mutters. It’s late, but not really late - seven on the dot, last time he checked - and Mac’s slumped in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, shooting worried glances over at Dennis’ laundry basket every minute or so like it holds the answer to every question he’s ever had.

It doesn’t. The only things in it is are a plaid shirt that Dennis has given up on reclaiming, a large blanket, and a cat - which has hidden itself at the bottom and refuses to come out.

“Maybe he’s just,” Dennis says, not looking up from the grocery list he’s writing. “You know. Having a fast day.”

“Cats don’t do fasting,” Mac insists. “Or they shouldn’t. And he hissed at me earlier, dude, he’s never done that before.”

Not to you, Dennis thinks. Something tells him to keep that line to himself.

Mac sighs, slumping even lower in his chair. He’s resting his head on his folded arms, still staring wistfully and pathetically at Dennis’ three week old laundry, and it’s - god, Mac’s an idiot. He really is. He gets attached to the wrong thing at the wrong time and then stubbornly clings to it anyway, regardless of the consequences.

Dennis closes his eyes. He opens them again. He shoves his phone in his pocket and grabs his keys.

“I’m heading over to Dee’s,” he says, before he can think it over too much. “Won’t take long.”

*

Getting to the vet turns out to be the easy part. He catches the cat off-guard the next morning, crams it into the pet carrier they use for Chardee Macdennis tournaments, and then shoves the whole hissing-and-spitting arrangement into the back seat of the car. The clinic itself, however, is another story entirely.

The waiting room has that weird, musty smell you find in places that pets frequent. The chairs are rickety and uncomfortable and there’s a fucking lunatic of a dog charging around that pisses Dennis off - and pisses the cat off even more, judging by the noises escaping from the carrier. They don’t abate, even when Dennis hefts it up in his arms and carries it into the exam room.

The vet frowns.

“Maybe he’ll calm down if you hold him?”

The carrier on the table trembles, ominously. A low growl emerges from its depths.

“Yeah, trust me,” Dennis mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. He regrets this already. “That’s not gonna happen.”

He ends up holding the damn thing in a death grip anyway - getting fur all over his sweater and scratches all up his arms in the process - while the cat gets poked and prodded. The vet tech shines a light into its eyes, and then its mouth, and then she puts the pointer down and starts to take her gloves off.

“You’re looking at a mild upper-respiratory infection,” she says. “Nothing too serious, I wouldn’t worry about it. You picked him up as a stray, you said?”

“Not me,” Dennis corrects. He puts the cat down quickly, avoiding the swiped paw that gets aimed in his direction as he starts brushing hair off his clothes. “My roommate found it outside and decided we were owning it, I didn’t get a say in the matter.”

The vet smiles, as though this is somehow a compliment, and not a damning analysis of Mac’s inability to do anything in moderation.

“I’ll write you a prescription for an antibiotic, you can pick it up at the counter on your way out. Do you have pet insurance?”

“That won’t be a problem,” Dennis says. His fingers curl around the card in his pocket.

*

“You took him to the vet,” Mac repeats, slowly. Dennis rolls his eyes up to the ceiling.

“Yes,” he says. “How is that so hard for you to understand?”

“You hate that cat,” Mac says. It almost sounds like he’s talking to himself; like he’s forgotten Dennis is in front of him at all. “Dennis, you -“

Dennis shifts, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t hate it,” he insists, defensively, “stop saying I hate it, I think it’s a nuisance and that you’re clearly enamoured with the goddamn thing, so -“

“So why’d you take it to the vet, then?”

“Because you were sad!” Dennis snaps, through gritted teeth. “And that was inconvenient, and if this thing is sticking around, which it clearly is, don’t bullshit me - we, you know. We might as well do a half-decent job.”

Mac’s just staring at him. He’s been staring at him since Dennis stepped through the door holding the carrier, and apparently he has no intention of stopping soon. He’s barefoot, still wearing the boxers and old t-shirt he fell asleep in the night before. He was still sleeping when Dennis left. Dennis takes a moment to curse the vet’s office for having the audacity to be busy on a Sunday morning. This would’ve been so much easier if Mac hadn’t caught him red handed.

“Dennis.”

“What?”

“I’m, uh,” Mac says. He lets out an odd, choked little laugh. “Don’t freak out on me.”

Dennis frowns. He opens his mouth to ask what it is, exactly, that Mac’s got planned, and whether or not there’s a low-effort way to talk him out of it - but he doesn’t get the chance, because Mac’s kissing him firmly on the mouth.

It’s messy. It’s slightly off-centre, almost brushing his jaw - and then Mac tilts his head and tries again, lets out a deep, shuddering breath as he reaches up to curl his hands in Dennis’ hair - and the thundering feeling is back in Dennis’ chest, brighter and warmer this time. It floods down every synapse and nerve until his whole body feels like a live wire. Mac’s just pressing short, feverish little kisses to his mouth, like he’s trying to have as much as he can before something runs out - and Dennis pulls away first, but not without settling his hands on Mac’s shoulders, determined to keep him from running.

“Sorry,” Mac says, dazedly. His voice is all soft and his eyes are the same, still staring at Dennis, wide and stunned. It’s making Dennis want to touch him again.

He ducks his head. He folds his arms fully around Mac’s neck to pull him closer - close enough that their noses are brushing, so he can slide his tongue over the warm slick curve of Mac’s lower lip and into his mouth, kissing him deeper, slower. He has a point to make. He figures this is the best way to get it across.

*

“He’s going to get better at it,” Mac insists.

Brian Bourne ‘Sweet Bee’ McReynolds Junior, who’s getting about as big as his name, is sprawled out on the table between them, watching a rat that’s crossing the floor of the bar with sleepy disinterest. Dennis prods at him with one finger. He doesn’t move an inch.

“You’re implying he had any talent for this to begin with.”

“He was born on the street, dude,” Mac says, stubbornly. “He has street-smarts. We just need to figure out how to activate them.”

Dennis frowns.

“It’s a cat,” he points out. “Not a transformer.”

“He’s talented, all right? He has - can you be a little more positive about this?”

“Mac,” Dennis says, scratching Sweet Bee’s chin. “Face it. He’s lazy as shit.”

“Bee knows how to chill out.”

“Bee is  _lazy_ ,” Dennis repeats, deadpan, “as  _shit_ ,” and Mac’s rolling his eyes but one of his hands is brushing up loosely against Dennis’ under the table, the tips of their fingers curling together. It’s raining outside. The bar is warm and dry, smelling of old beer and old smoke, cheap leather and home.

Sweet Bee stretches, yawning wide, before closing his eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> title is from pink and blue by the mountains goats, for no reason other than it’s the song i was listening to when i wrote it and i couldn’t think of a better one. thank u for reading!! i hope ur having a good day and if ur not i hope this helped a little bit. come hang w me on [tumblr](http://azirapha1e.tumblr.com) for more cat themed content and fic of questionable quality


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